 |
| Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs, Utah, known for its dense multiplicity of symbols. |
Okay, lets suppose you have been invited to a party by someone, but that someone is not the host because in this case there is no actual host. It's all sort of awkward. Being a very polite person you come to the place where the party is happening, your friend isn't there yet, and dozens of people are milling about and you ask out loud, "Mind if I join you?"
Now who are you actually asking? One might suppose that some people in the tumultuous throng might answer, "Sure, welcome, have a drink, we're about to start the karaoke" and others might think to themselves, "I don't like the looks of that guy." ;) So if there is no boss, if there is no host of the party, there is no actual source or clearing house for an authoritative answer on whether you are welcome or not. If you ask the whole seething mass "Might I have one of these pretzels?" and the partygoers were not feeling tactful, you might receive "Yes help yourself!" and "No, get lost!" as simultaneous answers.
Now who are you actually asking? One might suppose that some people in the tumultuous throng might answer, "Sure, welcome, have a drink, we're about to start the karaoke" and others might think to themselves, "I don't like the looks of that guy." ;) So if there is no boss, if there is no host of the party, there is no actual source or clearing house for an authoritative answer on whether you are welcome or not. If you ask the whole seething mass "Might I have one of these pretzels?" and the partygoers were not feeling tactful, you might receive "Yes help yourself!" and "No, get lost!" as simultaneous answers.
Suppose, pressing your luck, you address yourself to everyone and say, "I've just had a baby, please wish my new child good luck and a happy life." These tactless party goers might look at you strangely and think to themselves, "I don't know you or your baby, and I'm not sure I want to know."
Why have I brought up this thought experiment? Suppose you find yourself at the edge of a forest you've never been in, and being polite towards the spirits within you want to ask whether you may enter. It's their home after all, not yours. If you are a pagan, you might address yourself to the main deity in charge of forests in general, pretty much assume a positive response and stroll on in. What if the overall deity in charge of forests as a whole is really an abstraction? Maybe some other spirit will fill in for whatever name you actually uttered and say yes. Or maybe not. Maybe you will get a multiplicity of answers. Maybe you are just setting an optimal frame of mind for yourself, and no one is even listening. Maybe you are not actually having a conversation at all, with anything. Most likely you will stroll on in regardless. In other words your statement was a euphemism for "knock knock I'm coming in."
Taken to a further extreme, there are some sorts of Western occultism where you aren't even really truly addressing a god, angel or spirit at all, even though you appear to be doing so. The names and symbols of gods are used as a way to focus your mind and will on a target. That is why there is often a huge number of deities from totally different traditions with overlapping responsibilities that are used to some degree interchangeably. You aren't addressing something outside your head at all, you are shaping and focusing an intention inside your head. That's why for instance in the Golden Dawn, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish and Christian expressions and names are all used, even though the traditions themselves are to some degree mutually exclusive. You aren't actually talking to anyone, you are honing a point in your own mind. It's like an alternate symbolic language that only appears to be referring to gods and angels and so on. This initially confused the heck out of me, this grab bag of strange disembodied gods just all sort of hanging loose in the divine menagerie, without any real connection to anything except their particular use in the symbolic language of ceremonial magic.
Sometimes you might hear of native peoples asking permission of the plants and animals they are about to eat. Permission is a very unfortunate term, you're not really asking. 99.99% of the time, when you ask a living being whether you can eat them, the answer is going to be something like "fuck no what's wrong with you idiot?" If a talking tiger came up to me and asked me whether it could kindly eat me, I would commend it on its politeness, maybe offer to bring it a few pounds of nice raw steak instead, but if you are really asking, the answer is no. It's a euphemism for "I am going to eat you, I need to eat you, don't get all steamed up about it." ;) These sorts of euphemisms are deeply unsatisfactory to me. There are times when you have to say, "I need to eat you, and I am sorry that I do, but I do." If you have to go into the forest to gather firewood so you can cook dinner, then you really aren't asking if you can enter. You are saying, "Pardon me, I must enter and pick up some dead sticks or I don't eat tonight."
Why have I led you down this very strange and tortuous path thus far? A strange path full of indigenous tribes, chaotic parties, polite tigers, wizards and enchanted forests to boot? ;) It is to argue for specificity and relationship. Generally speaking, if you have a god of ALL harvests or a goddess of ALL fertility or a god of ALL communication or something, such a god is highly likely in my humble opinion to be an abstraction and not to actually refer to anything alive. And we can see why such abstractions exist: they are easy. You want to enter a forest and put on a gesture of politeness, you ask permission of the god of all forests and stroll on in. You want to kill a deer, you make a show of asking permission and then kill it anyway. Easy peasy. Problem is, pretty soon you are only dealing with abstractions in your own head and not with anything real. Relationship is always with specific beings and places, and it is hard and takes time. These specific beings and places are always, even if they live thousands of years, mortal. If you are ever lucky enough to build a relationship with a giant sequoia (and I envy you, bastard,) you are building a relationship with that specific being. Not the god of all trees. And that being will one day die, hopefully long after your grandchildren are dead, but it will die. When you are talking to your best friend, you are not talking to the "god of all humans." You are talking to him or her specifically. It is difficult and it does take time, which is why most indigenous tribal people are very much focused on their particular place. This is something that the colonists in America could never understand about the Native Americans: to the colonists all places were the same more or less. After all, they or their ancestors already left their places in Europe and came here. To the Native Americans, all places were definitely NOT the same, they had built a relationship with a particular land and the beings that lived within it. Non-native Americans often wonder why for instance the Lakota are so adamant about the Black Hills: it is because that is the particular place they have poured their hearts into building a relationship with. It is not interchangeable with other places. To them it is like someone saying, "I am taking your wife, but I am going to give you another one just as good, or maybe some money." So far they have refused a settlement from the U.S. Government for lands wrongly taken in the Black Hills that with interest has built to three quarters of a billion dollars. You don't sell out love or the sacred (which fundamentally are pretty nearly the same thing) for mere money. They want the Black Hills back, not the three quarters of a billion.
So, how do you ask to enter a forest you have never entered before? You find yourself a nice log or rock at the edge of the forest, you introduce yourself, you wait, you watch and you listen. Maybe you get a feel for some of the specific trees about, or watch how the squirrels regard you. And if you are really asking, this means that you are willing to act appropriately if the answer is no. Granted, you may have to enter the forest, that's a different matter and requires a different form of address. Don't actually ask if you aren't willing to leave if the answer is no. Maybe don't even enter at all the first time you come there, just linger on the edge. Or maybe you may immediately feel a welcoming feeling wash over you and decide to go on in. Over a long period of time, you will build relationships with that place and the beings in it, and it may become something like your own "Black Hills." Your place that is not interchangeable with other places, any more than one friend or one wife or husband is interchangeable with another.
For thousands of years, spiritual life been moving in the direction of more and more abstraction, and less and less actual connection with the real world, to the point that the real world itself has become an abstraction. First there were polytheistic religions whose gods could be immanent in various places, sometimes very tied to a specific place and other times more general. Then there was the monotheistic religions whose one god was only present in the world in the way that the potter is present in the clay of the pot he makes. I would like to argue for a reboot all the way back before polytheism proper, to relationships with the non-general and very specific spirits and beings of particular places; to spirits that are not totally different things than beings and places but are beings and places more properly and inclusively understood.
Taken to a further extreme, there are some sorts of Western occultism where you aren't even really truly addressing a god, angel or spirit at all, even though you appear to be doing so. The names and symbols of gods are used as a way to focus your mind and will on a target. That is why there is often a huge number of deities from totally different traditions with overlapping responsibilities that are used to some degree interchangeably. You aren't addressing something outside your head at all, you are shaping and focusing an intention inside your head. That's why for instance in the Golden Dawn, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish and Christian expressions and names are all used, even though the traditions themselves are to some degree mutually exclusive. You aren't actually talking to anyone, you are honing a point in your own mind. It's like an alternate symbolic language that only appears to be referring to gods and angels and so on. This initially confused the heck out of me, this grab bag of strange disembodied gods just all sort of hanging loose in the divine menagerie, without any real connection to anything except their particular use in the symbolic language of ceremonial magic.
Sometimes you might hear of native peoples asking permission of the plants and animals they are about to eat. Permission is a very unfortunate term, you're not really asking. 99.99% of the time, when you ask a living being whether you can eat them, the answer is going to be something like "fuck no what's wrong with you idiot?" If a talking tiger came up to me and asked me whether it could kindly eat me, I would commend it on its politeness, maybe offer to bring it a few pounds of nice raw steak instead, but if you are really asking, the answer is no. It's a euphemism for "I am going to eat you, I need to eat you, don't get all steamed up about it." ;) These sorts of euphemisms are deeply unsatisfactory to me. There are times when you have to say, "I need to eat you, and I am sorry that I do, but I do." If you have to go into the forest to gather firewood so you can cook dinner, then you really aren't asking if you can enter. You are saying, "Pardon me, I must enter and pick up some dead sticks or I don't eat tonight."
Why have I led you down this very strange and tortuous path thus far? A strange path full of indigenous tribes, chaotic parties, polite tigers, wizards and enchanted forests to boot? ;) It is to argue for specificity and relationship. Generally speaking, if you have a god of ALL harvests or a goddess of ALL fertility or a god of ALL communication or something, such a god is highly likely in my humble opinion to be an abstraction and not to actually refer to anything alive. And we can see why such abstractions exist: they are easy. You want to enter a forest and put on a gesture of politeness, you ask permission of the god of all forests and stroll on in. You want to kill a deer, you make a show of asking permission and then kill it anyway. Easy peasy. Problem is, pretty soon you are only dealing with abstractions in your own head and not with anything real. Relationship is always with specific beings and places, and it is hard and takes time. These specific beings and places are always, even if they live thousands of years, mortal. If you are ever lucky enough to build a relationship with a giant sequoia (and I envy you, bastard,) you are building a relationship with that specific being. Not the god of all trees. And that being will one day die, hopefully long after your grandchildren are dead, but it will die. When you are talking to your best friend, you are not talking to the "god of all humans." You are talking to him or her specifically. It is difficult and it does take time, which is why most indigenous tribal people are very much focused on their particular place. This is something that the colonists in America could never understand about the Native Americans: to the colonists all places were the same more or less. After all, they or their ancestors already left their places in Europe and came here. To the Native Americans, all places were definitely NOT the same, they had built a relationship with a particular land and the beings that lived within it. Non-native Americans often wonder why for instance the Lakota are so adamant about the Black Hills: it is because that is the particular place they have poured their hearts into building a relationship with. It is not interchangeable with other places. To them it is like someone saying, "I am taking your wife, but I am going to give you another one just as good, or maybe some money." So far they have refused a settlement from the U.S. Government for lands wrongly taken in the Black Hills that with interest has built to three quarters of a billion dollars. You don't sell out love or the sacred (which fundamentally are pretty nearly the same thing) for mere money. They want the Black Hills back, not the three quarters of a billion.
So, how do you ask to enter a forest you have never entered before? You find yourself a nice log or rock at the edge of the forest, you introduce yourself, you wait, you watch and you listen. Maybe you get a feel for some of the specific trees about, or watch how the squirrels regard you. And if you are really asking, this means that you are willing to act appropriately if the answer is no. Granted, you may have to enter the forest, that's a different matter and requires a different form of address. Don't actually ask if you aren't willing to leave if the answer is no. Maybe don't even enter at all the first time you come there, just linger on the edge. Or maybe you may immediately feel a welcoming feeling wash over you and decide to go on in. Over a long period of time, you will build relationships with that place and the beings in it, and it may become something like your own "Black Hills." Your place that is not interchangeable with other places, any more than one friend or one wife or husband is interchangeable with another.
For thousands of years, spiritual life been moving in the direction of more and more abstraction, and less and less actual connection with the real world, to the point that the real world itself has become an abstraction. First there were polytheistic religions whose gods could be immanent in various places, sometimes very tied to a specific place and other times more general. Then there was the monotheistic religions whose one god was only present in the world in the way that the potter is present in the clay of the pot he makes. I would like to argue for a reboot all the way back before polytheism proper, to relationships with the non-general and very specific spirits and beings of particular places; to spirits that are not totally different things than beings and places but are beings and places more properly and inclusively understood.
No comments:
Post a Comment